Hollywood Bread Ad – October 21, 1958

My family ate a lot of bread from both DeLuca Bakery and Hough Bakeries while I was growing up, so Hollywood Bread – shown above in an ad which which ran in the Lorain Journal on October 21, 1958 – seems a little foreign to me.

I didn't know the story behind Hollywood Bread until I prepared this blog post. I had assumed that it was baked in Los Angeles. It turns out that it was headquartered in Hollywood, Florida!

Hollywood Bread also positioned itself marketing-wise as a healthy choice for women trying to lose weight. According to ads, the diet bread was baked with 8 great vegetable flours without lard, grease or animal fats.

I read online that at some point the makers of Hollywood Bread got in trouble with the FTC for some of its weight loss claims. You can read about that here.

The bread is apparently no longer being manufactured. Its stylish, landmark headquarters building in Hollywood, Florida was for sale a few years ago (which you can see here).

The ad makes a vague tie-in to the movie Party Girl (1958), which runs on Turner Classics every once in a while. The movie is a film noir, full of gangsters, shootouts and scantily clad showgirls; in other words, not the best match for a product a mom might use to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids.

See for yourself – here's the trailer!

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When Mom did buy a national or regional brand of bread when we were kids, it was probably good ol' squishy Wonder Bread (it was great for making dough balls when we went fishing) or something from Nickles Bakery, like Hillbilly Bread – the subject of one of my very early blog posts.

I also remember annoying TV ads for Taystee Bread too, in which kids spelled out the name T-A-Y-S-T-E-E in raucous song. I don't think that bread is still around either.